"The Kurds are changing their minds about the Americans," said Taha, a young Kurd from the Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah who did not give his last name.

"The Kurds used to think the US was a strategic partner, but since it collaborated with Turkey to bomb Kurdistan they're changing their views," he said, sipping coffee in a local cafeteria.

On Thursday Ankara launched a fresh air and ground offensive in northern Iraq against rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the guerrilla group fighting for self-rule in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey.

Ankara claims to have killed dozens of PKK guerrillas, while the rebel group says it shot down a Turkish military helicopter on Saturday.

"America is openly helping Turkey against the PKK and pressuring (Massoud) Barzani and (Jalal) Talabani to take part in the war against the PKK," said Hannah Raouf, an bank employee in Sulaimaniyah.

Talabani is the president of Iraq and Barzani is the president of northern Iraq's Kurdish region.

"The attack against the Kurds is backed by the Americans because America is responsible for the security of Kurdistan and Iraq in general," said 37-year-old Amira Karim, a government employee.

Washington and Iraq's northern Kurdish region have enjoyed warm ties since the end in 1991 of the first Gulf War between the US-led coalition forces and Saddam Hussein's forces.

Some local Kurds compared Ankara's raids with those launched by Saddam in the 1980s.

"Under the old regime Iraqi forces bombed our villages and destroyed our crops. Now the Turkish army's doing the same thing," said shepherd Mohammed Amidi.

However Washington cautioned Ankara on Sunday about the operation.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, due in Ankara next week, said its forces should "leave as quickly as they can accomplish the mission," and urged Ankara to take political and economic measures to win over its sizeable Kurdish community and erode popular support for the PKK.

"Just using the military techniques are not going to be sufficient to solve the problems," he said.

The United States, which like Turkey lists the PKK as a terrorist group, is providing its NATO ally with real-time intelligence on rebel positions.

Baghdad, meanwhile, said the current operation by Ankara against PKK inside Iraq was not an attack against Iraq's sovereignty.

"We do not find these operations as an attack on Iraq's sovereignty," said Ali al-Dabbagh, Iraqi government spokesman.

"We do know there is a threat to Turkey from the terrorist group PKK. We do not have control... neither Turkey has control. But we have told Turkey that the operation should not destablise Iraq and the region."

Dabbagh said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on Saturday and that Maliki told Erdogan "the operation should not destabilise the region."